


Immortal

by etothey



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe, Comic, Fan Comics, Fanart, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 02:12:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 0
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dedicated to Kate Nepveu.  AU as all hell, diverging at ch. 100 of the manga: what if Roy had chosen the other way?  Produced using ink & brush (plus a few other tools), scanned and finished in Manga Studio Debut 4.</p><p>NOTE: Image links updated; sorry those were broken for so long!  Had a website update and didn't realize all the links would break.  Fixed now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. While You Are You

**Author's Note:**

> Note: panel layout is right to left (as with manga), mainly because it hurt my brain too much to have the source material be right to left and then switch my brain to the other way around.


	2. Tall Grass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the meantime, Wrath vs. Scar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fancomic is read right to left, like manga.


	3. The Conqueror Worm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homunculus has gathered the five he needs.


	4. The Tree of Language




	5. Arithmetic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alchemists 0, Homunculus 1. (More later, I have to hunt down my digital camera for the final page, and this seemed like the best breaking point.)


	6. Dulce et Decorum Est

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy has a plan. Whether the plan is a good idea is another question.


	7. Immortal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Homunculus's true face is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started with a nightmare. Ironically, the proximate cause of the nightmare didn't make it into the comic. I said to Joe as we were mainlining Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, "If I were prone to getting nightmares from character designs, that would do it." I was referring to Envy's true form. Guess what, that night, I had a nightmare and it involved much vomiting of souls.
> 
> That was not the worst part of the dream. The dream was actually a crossover (?) with C.L. Moore's "Vintage Season." Suffice it to say that, in the dream, I inhabited various viewpoints of anonydreamcharacters who were being manipulated and experimented on by faceless overlords. It turned out that the faceless overlords were doing this for their own amusement, up to and including using some kind of random number generator to decide on pairings so they could have more people to experiment on. The faceless overlords, when their faces were revealed, turned out to be fanfic writers.
> 
> Yeah. That hit where it hurt. Naturally, the correct response was to fic the dream.
> 
> I would have liked to make female characters more prominent, but I was frankly up against the fact that I am not an artist, and the more complex the storyline and the more characters involved--and shifting the focus away from the particular denouement I had in mind would necessarily have meant adding characters, at the very least General Armstrong--the harder it would have been for me to draw it at all. (As it stands, I got screwed over by the fact that, much as I love Hawkeye, I can't draw her well, and I minimized Ed and Al's appearances because trying to draw Al from different angles gave me nightmares of another sort.) I considered writing this as straight fic, without the art, but didn't think I could achieve the same visceral impact as efficiently. I also considered teaming up with an artist, but unfortunately I do not have enough $ to pay a good fanartist even a very, very modest sum, given that this was 16 pages of inks with about 50 panels. (A good fanartist would also have used backgrounds. Someday I will learn to do backgrounds.)
> 
> I would have liked to represent more parts of the world, and more women, in the quotes. Here again I was limited by the fact that I'm not fluent in anything but English. I did look through a bilingual volume of translated Korean poetry, but while there were many beautiful poems about the ineffable beauty of nature or the sorrows of love, there was nothing that suited "Immortal"'s subject material. I was also limited by the determination to use only public domain material in the quotes, although if Arakawa decides to sue me, I'm toast anyway.
> 
> An aside: I apologize for my inept use of speed lines. I can only plead that, in a program that is otherwise entirely in English, Manga Studio Debut 4's speed line dialog is _in Japanese_. I appreciate that it is _Manga_ Studio, but if it was going to be localized for English, I am confused as to why the speed lines would escape. There were many confusing options, and they probably would have taken me some time to puzzle out even if they'd be labeled in English. Sadly, I do not know Japanese. I figured out how to change the length and angle, but that was it.
> 
> Also? [Blambot](http://www.blambot.com)'s comic fonts (including some that are free for noncommercial use) are da bomb.
> 
> On more depressing notes, (a) wow do my lines, which are wobbly enough already, look even worse at 600 dpi, and (b) I either need to switch back to a cold press paper with a lot more tooth, or else find a blacker ink, because the black areas are an absolute mess.
> 
> Comments and concrit both welcome. I had fun with this and hope you did too!


End file.
